


Butterfly Net

by inlovewithnight



Category: Dead Like Me
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-16
Updated: 2009-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 03:25:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight





	Butterfly Net

The first boy Daisy ever kissed was a freckle-faced young creature with enormous teeth. He looked very much like a pony, really, she thought even at the time, with those teeth and a shock of dark reddish hair falling down over his forehead. A nice enough boy, but decidedly equine.

But he had a bag of penny candy and he smiled at her so sweetly, so she walked with him out behind the row of tents at the summer fair, and then she let him kiss her. His mouth tasted stale and sour under a thin layer of sugar. She didn't like that, but she did like the low noise he made, the way he sounded hungry for her.

They stood there out behind the tents and they kissed for long minutes, she couldn't properly keep track, and then he made another sound and grabbed her by the wrist, pushing her hand down against the front of his trousers and the surprising hardness there.

She pulled away and looked at him with enough shock that he turned red as a beet and told her not to tell anybody. He even pressed another piece of candy into her hand before he hurried away, his head down and his hands shoved in his pockets. She sat down on a bench and sucked slowly on the candy, turning it all carefully around and around in her head. It was the last time Daisy Jane Watson would be innocent about such things.

The next week, after church, she found him again, him and his teeth and his over-starched Sunday shirt, dragged him out into the trees, and told him to show her all of that again. She paid very close attention this time, and the time after that, and the time after that.

It didn't take too terribly long--a few years, and they were fast years, busy ones--before she was on a train to Hollywood, repeating her new name to herself under her breath--_Daisy, Daisy Adair_\--and admiring the lovely ring on her finger. It was so pretty it would be a shame to sell it in California, before she cabled her regrets back home to poor toothy Stephen who would just have to find another girl.

She was a good girl and a bad one, everybody's girl and nobody's, script girl and girl number three in the chorus line and then she was a dead girl, and that's apparently where she's going to stay for the foreseeable future, until she gets a lucky post-it and finally, her name in lights.

She still remembers every little thing she learned as all of those other girls, all the way back to Stephen showing her how to kiss, and how nice it was to make those hungry sounds happen, even if the mouth producing them tastes bad, like stale coffee and cheap whiskey and hashbrowns.

She pulls back and looks at him sternly. "We're not doing this any more until you go brush your teeth."

"Are you _joking_?" Mason sputters, and a lesser actress's expression would falter at the sight of him flush-faced and panting and sprawled out on the couch. She doesn't mess up, but it's a near thing; she _really_ loves this part. "Daisy."

"I'm not joking, Mason. There's mouthwash by the sink, now scoot."

He stands up slowly, shooting her a suspicious look through his lashes--he does have very pretty lashes, so wasted on a man, she can think of half a dozen actresses of the golden age who would have happily gutted him like a pig for those. "You're not going to leave while I'm in the loo, are you?"

"I live here, Mason. Where would I go?"

"Not going to change your mind?"

"Why are you stalling?"

He stares at her for another minute, mouth open like a very confused fish. She rolls her eyes at him and he shuts his mouth with an audible click, turns on his heel, and scrambles off to the bathroom.

She settles on the couch, fussing with her skirt until it lies flat across her knees, then shifting back and forth, trying to find the perfect pose, one that makes her a series of lines and curves, turns her into art.

"You're very lovely, Daisy Adair," he says softly, and she looks up, startled. She hadn't heard him come back in.

"Thank you," she says, the proper tone of assurance and being given no more than her due coming to her voice automatically. She studies him as he stands there, across the room, hesitating for some reason known only to him. She's never pretended to understand the male mind any more than she absolutely has to, the base and the basics.

"Really, though, Daisy," he says, taking a careful step forward, and for a second she wonders what he's waiting for, until the flicker of something in his eyes, the slightest twitch of his mouth, gives it away; he's waiting for her to change her mind. "You're beautiful."

"You're not going to go all strange about this on me, are you, Mason?" It comes out sharper than she intended, cold, and he takes that step back again.

"No."

She smiles, trying her hardest to make it honest, to not spoil things with her prickliness and sharp edges. She's never been good at being welcoming or warm; if it was ever in her nature, it was discarded as not being of use, and it's hard to bring that sort of thing back again. "We're going to be stuck with each other for a really long time."

"Most likely." Two steps this time, half the distance to the couch. "Barring a sudden change of events."

"I mean, it's been seventy years."

"Forty," he says, with a flash of a smile, and another step. She sits up a bit, curling her legs up onto the couch, sending her skirt creeping an inch higher on her knees. She knows every trick and pose, and part of her is sorry that it comes so easily to her, easily but not naturally. Always an act, never an instinct, and you did it to yourself, Daisy-girl, don't cry over the milk that's been spilled, it's gone.

"Seventy or forty, whatever." She tucks her chin now, letting her hair fall forward over her eyes. "We're not getting any younger."

"Or older." He's smiling more easily now, the comfortable grin that she likes when she lets herself look. "We're not getting any anything."

She laughs and that draws him in the last few steps. He sits down next to her, leaving just a little space between them, his hand hovering just above her knee, uncertain, not quite touching. She catches his wrist and pulls his hand down, pressing his palm to her thigh, flat against her skirt. He looks down at it, then up at her face, and reaches out with his free hand, pushing her hair back behind her ear. It's a gentle touch, feather-light and careful enough that her breath catches and she closes her eyes.

"Do you like me again, Mason?" That is not her voice, not her words. She closes her eyes tighter, not wanting to see the expression that goes with the sudden stillness of his fingers against her cheek.

Then they move again, slipping down to trace along her jaw, cup her chin. "Yeah, Daisy," he says softly, and there's a warm huff of breath against her lips. "I like you."

Now his mouth tastes like two kinds of mint, George's toothpaste and her own Scope. She can still smell the whiskey, though, on his clothes or his skin, and it makes her nose wrinkle a bit but she likes it. It's Mason.

"Like you rather a lot," he murmurs, and his hand slips down from her chin to her shoulder, and then her chest, slower and more cautious than she expects. She's still holding his wrist, she realizes, and she tries to draw his hand up higher, but he resists, rubbing his thumb in slow circles above her knee.

She turns a little, careful not to push him away, just trying to settle back against the arm of the couch. It's a silent cue that he could move on top of her if he wanted to, but he again he doesn't follow. He just keeps kissing her, slow and deep, stubble scraping against her skin, hand cupping her breast.

She smiles against his mouth, a tiny laugh escaping, too breathless to be mocking. "What are you waiting for?"

"Taking my time." He catches her lower lip and sucks on it lightly. "Not the kind of thing that happens every day."

"It does." She curves her hand around the back of his neck, and he finally moves closer, enough so that she can stretch her legs out on either side of him, cradling him close. "All over the world. Every house on the block, I bet."

"Not to me. Not with you."

There's just slightly too much there, and she tenses, pulling back with a frown. "You said you weren't going to go weird on me, Mason."

"I'm not." His eyes widen and she thinks she should want to laugh, but she doesn't. She just wants to keep looking at him, and she wants him to kiss her again. "Not going weird. No weird. Weird-free zone."

"That's what I like to hear." She takes charge of the kiss this time, makes it harder and more aggressive. No more taking time, that's what gets girls in trouble, Daisy Jane. Eyes closed and skirt up and take care of that vague heat in the pit of your stomach, and after that on to something else, maybe a nice sandwich and a soda, a walk in the garden before going Reaping tonight.

Except Mason's not playing right; he's kissing her but he's still not doing anything else. If this goes on much longer she's going to have to seriously question if he's ever done this before. "Mason," she mutters, in frustration and warning, "I don't have all--"

His hand slips up under her shirt just as she starts talking, brushing over her abdomen and then up across the sensitive patch of skin under her ribs, the one that makes her twist and giggle despite herself, her knees tightening around his hips and her head whipping to the side, cracking her temple against his nose.

He half-falls back, gasping in surprise, covering his face with his hand. "Ow," he pants, half-laughing, staring at her through his splayed fingers. "I'm...sorry? What did I do?"

"Ticklish," she mutters, sitting up, her hands moving automatically to her hair, struggling to fix the arrangement that's beyond help. Her face is burning and she _hates_ that, hates having anyone look at her when she's like this, hates missing a beat. "I'm just...ticklish, there, I didn't..."

He starts laughing and her jaw clenches, a rush of annoyance replacing the embarrassment heating her skin. "You're ticklish."

"I think I just said that, Mason, thank you."

"No, it's just..." She pulls away when he reaches for her, looking away, and his hand alights on her knee again, still gentle. "I wouldn't have thought of you as ticklish. It's very..."

She frowns and looks down at his hand; easier than his face, while she wonders at the lack of mockery in his voice, the honesty and..._cleanness_ of his amusement, like it's at the world and not at her. "Very what?"

"Human," he says, and leans in to kiss her again. "And lovely," he murmurs, guiding her back down against the arm of the couch, and she lets him, running her hands up his back and down again. She finds the hem of his t-shirt and tugs it up so she can find skin, run her fingernails along it and make him squirm. He groans softly, that hungry sound she knows by heart, but this time it carries that same spark of delight it did such a long time ago, the almost-innocent pleasure of discovering that she has this kind of power, before she realized it was the only kind of power she had.

He slides his hand up her skirt, and she laughs against his mouth, suddenly delighting in this, the ridiculousness of it, the ridiculousness of _her_. "I've done this a thousand times," she says, blinking at him. "I don't know why it's so funny all of a sudden."

"I'll try not to take that personally," he says, catching his thumb in the waistband of her panties and tugging them down her thighs.

"I didn't mean it like that." She lifts her hips, squirming a little to help him. "I just meant this is..."

"What?" He kisses the curve of her neck, tracing lips and teeth along the skin while his fingers move in light, teasing exploration between her legs, and she closes her eyes tight for a minute.

"Nice," she says, heat rushing to her face again. She doesn't mind so much this time. "This is nice."

He laughs and turns his head to kiss her mouth again, smiling. "It is. That's sort of the whole idea."

"I could do this for another seventy years."

"Forty," he says, then shakes his head. "No, yes, seventy, absolutely."

She moves against his hand and kisses him again, in instinct, and thinks that he might have been right after all, this isn't something that happens every day.

But maybe it could.


End file.
